Interactive: 2012 Primary Turnout by Voting Age Population

We've broken down the votes for both the Republican and Democratic U.S. Senate primaries. We've shown the differences in early voting totals and election day totals. But what about actual turnout? Normally, this is calculated by diving the number of votes cast for a given area by the number of registered voters. This is how it is reported by the Secretary of State, and what you will see when visit the official results page.

For this map, we decided to approach this a bit differently. Instead of using the number of registered voters (a number that is prone to fluctuation and tends to make for a very inconsistent metric), we instead used each county's voting age population, current as of the 2010 U.S. Census.

When the number of registered voters is used to calculate the turnout percentage, it comes out to 15.5 percent. Using the number Texas citizens of voting age instead, it drops to 11.1 percent. For comparison, it's worth noting that 72.7 percent of Texas' population is old enough to vote.

Use the map below to explore voting age percentages by county. Click on a county to see a breakdown of voting statistics, including number of votes cast in both the Republican and Democratic primaries, the total population, and the number of adults broken down by race.

To download the data, click here.

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Percentage of Voting Age Population
That Voted In Primary
0 to 10%
10% to 15%
15% to 20%
20% to 25%
More than 25%

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